SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LABOR: NEW DIMENSIONS

Thursday, June 29 – Saturday, July 1, 2006
at the Saint-Petersburg State University,
Saint-Petersburg, Russia
For detailed information: EAEPE sympo06.doc.
I've been wanting to visit Saint Petersburg for a few years, to benefit by the big sprucing up for the tercentennial in 2003, now that the celebration is finished and the crowds are presumeably back to normal levels. However, looking at the conference info, I'm don't know that I'd be welcome: "... to bring together a limited number of researchers (maximum 50)..." This may well be one of those events where intellectual tourism is unwelcome; where presenting a paper is required for attendance. Indeed, "Everyone is urged to volunteer to serve as a session chair." "The symposium is open to everyone working on labor markets across the social sciences."

The first segment is focused on comparative research of labor market transformations. Globalization, internationalization and localization of the labor force make it important to examine inter-related labor markets. This work should take into account how labor markets have, on one hand, class, ethnic, and gender dimensions and, on the other hand, that there is movement between labor markets (of different temporal durations) and these movements are in themselves influenced by class, race and gender. We would particularly welcome papers on intra-European mobility and inter-European/Asian labor mobility, including the role that Chinese and Indian workers are playing in European labor markets.

The second segment is devoted to the multiple interpretations of labor and its historical transformation(s). In particular we want to bring together different social scientists including economic historians, sociologists and anthropologists who work on the conceptualization of labor, its relationship to production and distribution, and as an essential aspect of human nature and human behavior. We believe that enriched by recent improvements in the various social sciences a fuller concept of labor is possible. This conceptualization will be both more ontologically oriented and be more sophisticated than the conceptualization used in the 20th century. In addition, this conceptualization is influenced by changes in institutions and technologies. An important part of this re-conceptualization of labor is to look at employer-employee relations, contractual arrangements and conflicts, alienation and exploitation, and therefore the challenges for labor politics and trade union movements in the 21st century.

Assuming the Scientific Committee of eight attends, that only leaves about forty-two places...what would Douglas Adams think of that?
Oleg Ananyin (Moscow, Russia)
Grбinne Collins (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
John Groenewegen (Delft, The Netherlands)
Maria Lissowska (Warsaw, Poland)
Pascal Petit (Paris, France)
Irina Peaucelle (Paris, France)
Mikhail Sinyutin (St-Petersburg, Russia)
Yuri Veselov (St-Petersburg, Russia)



From the Heterodox Economics Newsletter-21,